Even white lies in my book are wrong. I value honesty almost as high as respect, in fact I think that when you lie you are crossing the respect line. However, most people don’t work this way… for the longest time I had difficulty dealing with this. As a society, lies are almost an accepted for of communication under the cover of being polite.

Sure, it is accepted that if someone asks you how cute their baby is you say adorable… but how far does that go? However, you are safe bringing your kids around me, I will not go out of my way to tell them that Santa is not real. I will tell you if your kid is annoying, but you can bank on the fact that I don’t mind them being kids around me or in public.

Now that I have a daughter I get constantly bombarded with the, OMG SHE IS GORGEOUS! and I respond with my canned “I think so too but I am biased.” Is my kid cute? Most certainly, but not anymore than anyone else’s kid. I don’t value outward appearance over a lot of other qualities in a human being. I know this is not the norm in modern American society where everything is about how well (or bad) you look. Selfies are the latest expression of narcissism.

I don’t want little tyrant to start thinking that because people say positive things about her that it matter more than hard work or intelligence. I am sure she will eventually face someone that thinks she is ugly and I want her to have enough self assurance to know that their opinion is just that. It is a tough think to even consider but we live in a very cruel world.

I find interesting the whole notion of kids can be cruel, and I am inclined to think that it is more about kid having shitty parents. Kids learn words and behaviors from their parents. If you call your kid stupid, guess what, they are probably going to use those words on some other kids. Same with the word ugly and all down the line. I know unless I move to some utopia where everyone is nice my daughter will get called ugly some day and I am going to make sure she is prepared without being scared of what someone else’s opinion is. Again this is just me trying to figure this out, I bring no wisdom to this discussion and like always I leave with more questions than answers.

When discussing this post with H this was the title that came to mind. I have been having a hard time deciding how much of a group that I belong to is noise vs useful information. I have a lot to talk about the topic and I thought I was going to start with the elitism of the group that I kind of started to talk about when I let everyone know that I’m kind of a big deal.

Recently I saw one of the ugliest things that happen in online communities happen. Almost in every community I have managed there has been a (if you quit without clearing it with the admin’s first, you are gone forever…no excuses) rule. The reason for that rule has been pretty simple, it never rewards the person seeking attention with a platform to set the place on fire before they leave. Don’t fool yourself, if you allow people to “air their grievances” on their way out it creates a level of negativity. This community that I am a part of (not manage at all) amplifies the damage with turning the blaze of glory into a full forest fire. Instead of doing some actual administration, the move to ridicule the person and bring up as an excuse the “this person did it before.”

They are failing at acknowledging that there are obvious issues with the community (recently there have been a bubbling of issues, and this last “I quit thread” has the flavor of someone piling on and not just really having true grievances.) Most of the “elite” posters of the group quickly moved to ridicule one of the most important issues to me. Now that I am moving to the “daddy blogger” world, what are some of the cautionary tales of using your cute kid as a product.

While the immediate reaction was to make fun of anyone that says that they don’t blog to make money or monetizing their kids, I think it is foolish to not have the conversation. I was sad that every time that I tried to engage people on this topic I only got one meaningful conversation out of my whole Dad2.0 experience. This has been probably the biggest thing on my mind about blogging as a roadblock. Previously it was employment, while I have plenty of funny stories about the IT world, I still have to pay the bills.

I was hoping that a group of people that should run the whole spectrum from I make no money from my pictures to the I am a brand ambassador for a manly cuticle remover would want to engage on the topic. The problem is that most of the elite people adopted a position, posted about it 3 years ago and feel like the topic is closed. The truth is that time changes, social media changes and the topic should be revisited if someone brings it up. That is not happening at all in this community.

The latest quitter brought it up, and instead of it being discussed it was set aside as basically just someone trying to insult everyone for turning their kids into slot machines. It is a true concern for me, not because I want to make money at this blogging thing but because I don’t want Tiny Tyrant to some day say that I used her for my own amusement.

All jokes aside, I am not an expert on this, I am new at this and I have concerns and would love some advice. I don’t want to be one of the parents in toddlers and tiara’s because I think Tiny Tyrant is the cutest baby in the world… or get her into modeling, or whatever but it seems every day that she loves music… do I encourage it, do I post it online, do I keep it to just performance in the living room or do I make her the next vine star?

I promised myself this year that I will recapture as much of myself as I could. Blogging being a big part of me for many years and it being an outlet from emotions from random to happiness. My wife is a blogger, before we met each other in real life we had read each others’ blogs. My wife is also a gamer, we had actually gamed together and enjoyed time slaying dragons before we got together. My wife is also a nurse, a dam good one, an oncology nurse. It makes me very proud to know her as a person and even more so that she chooses to have me as her mate.

I call her H. When I text friends for some reason even if autocomplete wants to spell out her name it makes me think of her. Lots of things make me think of her. I love to hear her point of view, I love the fact that she will watch the news and yell at the TV with me. I love the fact that we can laugh every single day. Stupid things I had in my head for years that I can now share and they are not just silly but reality. People thought I was crazy for wanting to laugh every single day… but that is how we roll. And laugh we do.

She has a good sense of humor, not just because she finds me funny but because she is truly witty and quick. We kind of pick on our friend JT a little bit too much when both of us get going. I still remember when XO found out that we were becoming a couple and he said he could not think of two more perfect people for each other. Oh how right he was.

Today is H’s birthday and I am very happy to celebrate this day with her. The gifts, parties, and festivities are all well and fine but that morning happy birthday and looking into her eyes before I kiss her and hold her close to me, that is priceless. Makes me feel lucky, but most importantly every time I give her love I receive it right back.

Don’t get me wrong, the monologue from Chris Rock was almost required but I believe some lines were crossed. Having the little Asian kids be the PWC Consultants was not cute, it was a little insulting. Latinos for example have not been relegated to just being the best friend, but always the “foreign” maid. Sofia Vergara has even done that before even though she had a very successful career in Spanish TV. I think it is time for us to stop highlighting the stereotypes as cartoonish as they are and just moving forward in the conversation. We seem just as stuck on that cycle as the people that refuse to see other races for what they are, human.

Some of Rock’s performance was funny, but I think overall he let the true message get mixed in with the comedy. I would have much appreciated it if at some point things got really serious and we moved past the humor and addressed equality head on. Calling out “Black Lives Matter” is not the same as addressing things head on.

I believe both Iñárritu and DeCaprio did a better job of being eloquent on what it will take to move forward. In an era where we have a buffoon running for president and a refugee crisis that somehow everyone seems to want to ignore we need to do more. As parents we should be making it a priority to leave our kids equipped with a more comprehensive world view and more importantly a world they can live in.

What happened last night will spur lots of “news” but the important thing is, will it really spur conversation?

We need to have conversation about all of those topics brought up last night and move forward from the awkward jokes and laughter of pointing out the obvious.

I am still trying to come down from the high of being at the Dad 2.0 Summit. Writing about it is helping a bit, but it is pretty difficult to be around this much positive energy and not miss being able to talk to amazing person after amazing person. I met a couple of people in person that have inspired me in the past, one of them was Dooce, or Heather as I feel I can call her now since she was gracious enough to have a couple of conversations with me and I got to tell her about my wife having the same name as her.

Swifty has 80K plus twitter followers and if you combine his youtube channels we are talking 100K plus reach easily. Sure it is the video game world, but sponsorship and views have kept this guy in the front of many people’s monitors. I did not expect him to be as down to earth and approachable as he was. No ego, just a dude enjoying his life and trying to motivate others to work out and play video games while having some fun.

It is kind of surreal to see people’s faces that you have seen on twitter or facebook walk right pass you. You obviously don’t know them and they don’t know you but it was interesting how approachable some of the biggest names were including Dooce. I introduced myself and thanked her because being in the blogging world 10+ years she has been a source of inspiration in many ways. She was gracious and we had a conversation.

The second day in the conference I waved and she actually stopped and asked me how things were going. She really owes me nothing as a fan but like so many of the big time bloggers I have met before she engaged me and was vary gracious. I was nothing but surprised when I hear rumblings of people not being too happy with the panel that she was a part of.

Evaluation of my performance at #dad2summit: "Mom blogger comes to take a shit in the middle of the floor at dad conference."

This is when I start to lose my patience with people. I see this quite often, people really are waiting for a reason to be pissed. A reason to return their food and unload on a waiter that did not even cook the meal. I am sure some people have been blogging for 10+ years… or maybe not. I don’t know many people that like her made a career and newsflash people there is bad with the good. Blogging and being public is not easy, it has many lines that you cross in good faith and then are hurt by. Which is why I am so surprised when people that have that level of reach are still willing to talk to fans and engage at that level.

People that are so negative seem to at times be self important and not realize that when someone with experience shares a point of view, they are saying “hey this sucked, maybe you can watch out for it.” In the end I have had so many experiences that affected my blogging in a negative way that having someone point out the land mines is not a bad thing.

One regret I do have from the conference is that one line that I am having a hard time deciding on is how much of “tiny tyrant” my daughter, do I want to involve in this crazy world of blogging. I got some passing conversations but not a true engagement on that discussion which I think is important.

Interestingly enough the semi famous people that I have run into with a reach that is probably not as impressive as some of the ones I mentioned above; were the ones that walked right past as the avatar they wear online. I guess I will just swipe through those.

Word of caution though, don’t judge people until you have actually approached them and they totally blow you off. You are responsible for at least that first step. If you don’t take it, then the blame is squarely on you.